Vera Sytch's Posts
Philanthropists among us
"Nowadays, we think of a philanthropist as someone who donates big sums of money, yet the word is derived from two Greek words, philos (loving) and anthropos (man): loving man. All of us are capable of being philanthropists. We can give of ourselves." - Edward Lindsey
And that is exactly what Audry Malcolm and Pam Brown, who work at Kodak Office in downtown Rochester, do during their lunch hour every other week: they give their time to help senior citizens and shut-ins.
Pam and Audry
Audry and Pam are volunteers for Meals on Wheels, an organization that provides nutritious meals to elderly, disabled, and housebound individuals. For the last seven years, Audry has spent two lunchtimes per month delivering meals; Pam, who initially filled in temporarily, has been volunteering for five years.
View of downtown Rochester from the apartment building & Apartment building across the Genesee River
The tall apartment building on the other side of the Genesee River where Audry and Pam distribute meals is about a ten-minute walk from their downtown office. Audry said that she appreciates getting out of the office twice a month to do this volunteer work.
"It's a rewarding experience to serve someone. Sometimes we are the only people that these folks see all day," said Audry. "We used to go to five or six people; now we just go to three. The others have gone elsewhere or to hospices."
Both the husband and wife of one elderly couple that they used to visit had surgery, and they would tell Audry and Pam about their operations when they brought the meals. "The couple was from Jamaica, like Audry," Pam added.
A volunteer driver transports the meals to the apartment building and distributes them to volunteers like Audry and Pam, who then deliver the meals to the clients. The tenants are very friendly and accommodating, even the ones who don't participate in the program, often holding the doors open or pressing elevator buttons for Audry and Pam when their hands are full.
Pam and Audry going through the delivery list & Audry delivering a meal
Audry and Pam know what it's like to make a difference in people's lives and to give of themselves. Yet by giving, they receive.
Do we really need another pet?
At last count, we had 83 pets. Thus it was not with a great deal of enthusiasm that I met my daughters' most recent request: "Please, please, Mom, can we get a bunny?"
My two daughters spotted these cute, furry creatures for sale at the public market when they accompanied me there one Saturday morning. The saleswoman generously put a rabbit in their arms for them to cuddle. They were hooked.
"If Dad says it's OK, I have nothing against it," I sighed, "providing you are the ones taking care of it!" Since I'd had a pet-deprived childhood, I wasn't one to deny my children the company of animals. However, I didn't think there was a chance that Dad would agree to take in another pet.
But I was wrong.
Over the years, we had either owned or "pet sat" dogs, cats, gerbils, a rat, a mouse, hermit crabs, a cockatiel, finches, sea horses, guinea pigs, a hedgehog, praying mantises, frogs, a corn snake, garter snakes, ducklings, and lots of tropical fish and goldfish - never a bunny. But then, how much trouble could a rabbit be?
My daughters organized their appeal for a new pet like managers of a campaign. "Take us to the library," Kalyna requested one evening. The girls strolled out with a pile of books about rabbits. A few days later, they presented a five-page handwritten report to Dad called "All About Pet Rabbits" in which they described what was involved in caring for a bunny to prove that they knew what they were getting into.
Dad relented. "All right, you can get a rabbit - on the condition that if it doesn't work out after a few weeks, the person you buy it from takes it back." The girls nodded enthusiastically and grinned broadly. They spent the next few evenings daydreaming about their future pet and coming up with names for the bunny - "Anything but Bun-Bun," Kalyna insisted. I borrowed a cage from a coworker, which the girls set up in their bedroom. And the woman at the public market agreed to take back the rabbit, if necessary.
Bun-Bun - somehow no other name stuck - proved to be a noisy companion from the start. As the girls turned in for the night, Bun-Bun began to rearrange items in his cage. He thumped and rattled, hopped and bumped all through the night. And his cage needed to be cleaned often. Every day, in fact. Clouds of bedding drifted to the floor all around the cage, so the girls had to sweep up several times a day. Kalyna and Natalia did all this without complaining, but it didn't take long for them to realize that a rabbit was a labor-intensive pet. And he could only come out of his cage when someone was watching so that he didn't chew electrical wires or wooden molding. Somehow that rabbit wasn't giving them quite as much payback in terms of cuddling or affection as they had imagined. And he was far more work than they had envisioned! But it was a lesson the girls needed to learn on their own. Lest they forget, I documented the lengthy process of cleaning the cage.
Note: I moved the cage under a skylight so I could photograph this task under natural light. Using flash would have cast harsh shadows.
Four weeks after we got him, my daughters returned Bun-Bun. Now we're back down to 83 pets - one cat and 82 fish. However, we have some new pets incubating already...!